Can anyone help? I am trying to send a scriv file to another Scrivener user. I save the file to my embedded Dropbox folder and email out directly or share a link. But when my collaborator tries to open it / bring the file (just a single doc, not full project) into his version of scrivener it won’t open. We are both using Macs.
A Scrivener project is actually a folder, not a file. It is looking like a file but is in reality a folder, what Apple calls a “package”. This is to prevent the user from directly dealing with the content of the folder.
You need to give your collaborator access to the whole folder containing the project, or to export as .zip and mail the .zip file.
My preferred method for this is the File ▸ Back Up ▸ Back Up To… menu command. That has three important facets to how it works, all useful for collaboration and sharing:
- It saves a complete copy of your project to another location on your disk without moving you to that session (like Save As would). You can spin off a copy and get right back to working on the master version of the project.
- It has a built-in zip compression option. As noted, you need to pack the project down into one file to efficienty send it.
- You get an automatic date and time stamp on the file name. That’s quite useful when you’re sending periodic copies and want to ensure everyone is on the latest.
True, you can put the whole project on Dropbox and share it that way, but it can be a little confusing for others, if they use the web interface rather than installing the Mac client—and if they do have the client it can get messy if there isn’t a clear protocol on whether it should be edited in place or copied elsewhere first. You may have to explain how to unzip something (though anyone using Safari probably won’t have to bother), but at least you’ll be sure they are getting the whole thing and that their copy is definitley not the one you’re working on or anything risky like that.